The Silence Before Bach is an approach to music and the trades and subjects that surround it through Bach’s works. A look at the profound dramaturgic relationship between image and music where the latter is not merely conceived as subsidiary to the image but as a subject of the narration in its own right. The film springs from a previously defined musical structure. The soundtrack feeds on works by J.S Bach and two of Felix Mendelssohn’s sonatas to create an architectural vault beneath which the story of the film unfolds ; a promenade through the XVIIIth, XIXth and XXIth centuries led by the hand of J.S. Bach.
In a flat, a young couple and a prostitute try to build S&M games, but desires and willing are vague, contradictory, incompatible.
Candidiasis is a parable about two girls, Candida and Serena, with different expectations concerning their relationship.
Candide never loved her. Manipulation is his favourite game.
Told in real time and shot as a single take, Boxing Day documents the minute by minute events across the course of an afternoon in the life of Chris – a recovering alcoholic and alienated father. Living alone on home detention, Chris is preparing Christmas lunch for his teenage daughter when an old friend turns up and exposes the disturbing truth about his ex-wife’s new boyfriend. The film documents in painstaking detail, the harrowing journey of a family on the brink of disintegration. As the situation escalates inexorably we are drawn into the compelling story of a father who must finally decide to expose the dark and disturbing secret that threatens to tear his family apart.
Agathe spends her holidays alone by the seaside. In the emptiness of her days, she finds something to do: a sport beyond her physical capabilities. Who cares! The point is to push past her limits.
Derek, an asthmatic misanthropic bicycle enthusiast and his sensitive all-American sitcom-loving cousin Bruno live together in a small house in Trenton, New Jersey. The two opposites try, with difficulty, to get along.
Pierre, age 58‚Ķ Prisoner of his past… Increasingly unable to cope with loneliness… With time… With the outside world… Uses psychotropic substances… Holes up at home…The only place where he suffers less… Waiting for inspiration… Has a writer’s block… Has a lunch appointment with a friend… An old friend from way back… The friend doesn’t show up… He learns of his sudden death… Has to deal with the law… the family… the loss of the will… His HIV infection… The urgent need to begin a tritherapy… Alone with himself… Pull himself together… See a few friends again… Live out his fantasies… Ends up as a woman wandering around Pigalle…
Nokiro teenage daughter has killed one of her classmates, Junichi’s daughter. A year later, in a small industrial town in the Hokkaido region, Junichi and Noriko see themselves everyday without speaking or exchanging looks. Prostrate with grief, they no longer feel anything. Suddenly he decides to buy her a present. Little details in their lives change. Their existence becomes stronger to each other, redeemed by the life they had given up. They regain a taste for life, overwhelmed by a love that transforms them despite themselves. Lyrical, raw and sensitive, this feature film highlights all the little details that constitute life and pays tribute to it.
In a journey between Viseu and Lisboa, Jorge Silva Melo rebuilds for the actor Pedro Gil his relationship with Álvaro Lapa, the interviews he filmed with the artist, the years he passed watching the growth of one of the most peculiar works in the Portuguese art scene. And the question: what is literature? A long journey of initiation, reviewing all the pictorial and literary work and ending with Álvaro Lapa’s declaration: Available, available is youth. Even if it is incapable, destructive. But it’s available.
Ana and Ricardo just moved in to a new house located in a private estate. Ana relaxes, Ricardo places the books on the shelves, Sofia, the housekeeper does the cleaning. Outside, the neighbors play golf.
Tavi, a man in his late thirties, discovers that Alexandra, his 4 years old daughter, is not calling him Dad anymore.
Karcsi, a Roma-boy from a small hungarian village, died of pulmonary embolism in spring 2006, briefly before his 10th birthday. His school mates and friends remember him and tell his story. Memory and imagination blend into a sensitive and colourful narration about their dead friend. The adult world is far away and present at the same time. Karcsi stays invisible throughout the film, but his presence is drawn in each sentence and gesture of the boys.
Três locais diferentes de prostituição: Tailândia, Bangladesh e México. A primeira parte passa-se num bordel-aquário onde as prostitutas estão sentadas atrás de um vidro iluminado, como modelos prontas para uma passerele, à espera que os clientes as escolham. A prostituição na Tailândia é uma rotina diária, um serviço ao cliente, uma empresa de entretenimento que contrasta com as duas outras cidades. Em Bangladesh, as mulheres vêem o seu trabalho como um serviço social: se não prestassem os seus serviços, os homens estariam a violar mulheres nas ruas. Elas sacrificam a sua dignidade todos os dias por dinheiro. No México, vemos a profissão ser literalmente glorificada, enquanto Glawogger filma uma prostituta a trabalhar. Imagens maravilhosas e excepcionalmente editadas, acompanhadas pelos sons de PJ Harvey e Cocorosie, constituem uma tela voyeurista da profissão mais antiga. (Nina Veligradi) Three different locations of prostitution: Thailand, Bangladesh and Mexico. The first part is set in a fish tank brothel, where the prostitutes are sitting behind a lit glass like models ready for a runway, where customers chose. Prostitution in Thaland is an everyday routine, a customer service, an entertainment business in contrast with the two other cities. In Bangladesh, women are approaching their job as a social service. If they didn’t perform their services men would be raping women on the streets. They sacrifice their sence of shame everyday for money. In México, we are getting literally the glory of the profession, where Glawogger is filming a prostitute at her service. Worderful images exceptionally edited accompanied by the sounds of PJ Harvey and Cocorosie constitute a voyeuristic camvas on the oldest profession. (Nina Veligradi)
A deceptively simple set-up: the director and his father watch a 1988 football match which the father refereed, their commentary accompanying the original television images in real time. A Bucharest derby between the country’s leading teams, Dinamo and Steaua, taking place in heavy snow, one year before the revolution that toppled Ceau»ôescu.
The Gospel According To John read by Luis Miguel Cintra, one of the most prominent Portuguese actors. A glimpse at a personal experience of Jesus, filmed outdoors, from dawn to sunset, and materialized in the grain of the voice, the expression, control, rhythm and breath of the actor himself.
Tom, a young advertising copywriter, travels to the country for a funeral. There, he’s shocked to find out no one knows who he is, nor who he was to the deceased, whose brother soon sets the rules of a twisted game. In order to protect the family’s name and grieving mother, Tom now has to play the peacekeeper in a household whose obscure past bodes even greater darkness for his “trip” to the farm.
La part de l’ombre recovers the life of the Hungarian photographer Oskar Benedek, who disappeared the day his exhibition opened; what happened to him?
